Goats

Well, our grand Goat Adventure was concieved when Garth and I took a walk out to the back of our property in June and could hardly get to the creek because of the huge blackberry bushees that were encroaching from every side. It was truly amazing. I had heard that goats would eat them down to nothing with no trouble, so I was on a Mission! I combed Craigslist for goats, called goat experts and persued goat owners trying to buy goats. Eventually I was successful...I found a pair of whethers (castrated males) on craigslist and they were available NOW. So, one Thursday afternoon, I drove our little pickup to Vernonia, Oregon. There I loaded up Billy and Jimmy into large dog crates in the back of the truck, and drove home. They bawled pitifully all the way. When I got home, Anthony Ndirangu, our housekeeper, helped me unload them. He is from Kenya and knows all about goats. We put them in the backyard and I thought our blackberry troubles were over...

They had only just begun. Those two are master escape artists. They easily jumped over the 3 foot fence around the llittle yard I put them in, and over the 4 foot fence Garth and Jared strung across out backyard separating us from out neighbors. We finally put up a 6 foot fence with the help of a man from Church, but they found a chink on the armor and were once again eating the neighbor's fruit trees! It was an ongoing battle, but meanwhile they DID eat all the blackberries!

Our final resort was to leash them individually to trees, fence and zipline. Of course, they managed to wrap the lines around trees, sticks and each other, as well as their own feet.

Garth found the whole advenrture really amusing, especially as his job was pretty grim during this period, but I had had enough. I adverised them again on Craigslist and an Indian man from Fiji came and took them away for $100 (in the back of his PT Cruiser!). We spent $75 for goats, $500 for fencing and got a clean lot in back and lots of experience!